Only 7 rainy days all Summer long!

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Only 7 rainy days all Summer long!

Another chance of rain has come and gone. Widespread rain and thunderstorms moved along and north of the US20 corridor from Waterloo to Dubuque and Freeport Monday night. Tuesday morning’s storms will track south of Galesburg. And as drier air filters into our region, our rain chance will once again go down to zip, zilch, zero here in the Quad Cities.

What’s interesting is how few rainy days we’ve had all Summer. It’s been more than a week since we’ve seen rainfall in the Quad Cities with 0.17″ of rain falling on August 11th. Going back through the record books, we’ve only seen rain seven times this entire season!

1.38″ on June 22nd

5.10″ on June 30th

0.24″ on July 5th

1.13″ on July 12th

0.39″ on July 25th

0.54″ on August 4th

0.17″ on August 11th

What’s interesting is that officially we’re over for the season! We’ve seen nearly 9 inches of rainfall when we should’ve seen 8.64″. But don’t let those numbers fool you. The 5 inches of rain we got on June 30th didn’t soak into the ground. Instead, that caused flash flooding and most of the water went right into the creeks and rivers. So it’s more like we’re 5 inches below normal when it comes to summertime rainfall.

Our next chance of rain is coming Wednesday night. Hopefully our luck will be a little better this go-around. But I wouldn’t bet on rain just yet! As far as the long-range forecast, you guessed it! We’re likely to remain below normal with respect to precipitation straight through the first few weeks of September.